AMD announces 40W six-core Opteron

The new Opteron processors from AMD feature six processing cores but retain the 40W power draw of their quad-core predecessors.

AMD this weekend introduced a new Opteron series featuring six processing cores and a rather amazing 40W power draw.

As reported over on Maximum PC, the processors - which are aimed at the same server market as rival Intel's Xeon chips - are designed to be low-power units for use in blade servers and dense rack environments. Impressively, the 40W ACP is the same as the companby's quad-core processors released back in April, meaning that you get an additional two processing cores for free - electrically speaking.

Accusing rival Intel's Xeon chips of ditching features in favour of a lower power draw, AMD's Brant Kerby claims that the low power consumption of the new range does not come at the cost of reduced "memory speed, bus support, hyperthreading, or cache size."

The price point of the new chips has not yet been confirmed, but it's the low ACP is thought to come at a premium compared to the company's existing quad-core 40W Opteron units.

The low power draw is indicative of the impressive strides made in processor technology ove the past few years: AMD's director of business development John Mure has pointed out that a mere six years ago single-core chips were drawing 58W, with the new Opteron series coming out at a positively minuscule 6.67W per core.

Where server technology leads, the mainstream will follow: accordingly, 2010 is likely to bring a range of low-power cool-running six-core chips from AMD - and Intel isn't likely to take the challenge lying down.

Does the thought of a six-core chip drawing just 40W fill you with desire, or would you need more details on clock speeds and pricing before you were prepared to be impressed? Share your thoughts over in the forums.

lol, but a more serious note: this could be quite promising if they begin developing CPU's with low power requirements for high overclocking etc. Even if they jump back to 2ghz (per core) overclocking to like 3ghz + for a short while till the chips can be developed into better frequences. So probably nothing fantastic compared to the i5/i7s for a short while but in a few years reckon this could be a good direction of CPU's. But as said above.. details required to see if really successful this time round :)

Originally Posted by general22Bit sad technology wise that AMD needs 6 cores to keep up with the server beast that is Nehalem. On the other hand if it provides comparable performance the consumer won't really care.

Originally Posted by stonedsurd[You do realize that Nehalem munches on power like a gremlin on pot?

Nehalem is pretty power efficient considering it does more work per clock so finishes the task quicker and has pretty good idle power characteristics. Also from this tech report posting http://techreport.com/discussions.x/17502 it seems that this hex core runs at 1.8 Ghz. Might be a good upgrade for existing opteron servers.

An Atom core or simular for tasks of under 50% load, and a 4/5 cores of current gen CPU's which deal with high load tasks. But those 4/5 cores dont idle they would actually turn off completely if possible.

It might be a difficult idea to develope, might even be silly but it would save a bucket load of energy!

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